HD 'Hermione'
by tigersilver
Summary: AU. EWE. A little peek into the mind of Girl Wonder.


**HD 'Hermione'**

Hermione wishes she didn't care quite so much. It would all be so much the easier if she could, indeed, exist more often undisturbed in that removed space her quick mind creates. Her _stage_, she terms it, _of operations_, and feels that that is the mental arena in which she conducts herself best—the most efficiently, and with the highest degree of clarity—acuity, even. An area cleared of extraneous intrusion—emotion, interruption, confusion. Clean, white, pure: shining.

Harry, by his very existence, generates huge amounts of kinesthetic energy. It swirls about his person and ebbs and flows like the tides when he's his usual self and erupts into monumental surges (like Biblical floods) when he's not.

For a short while, after Voldemort, there was a tenuous peace to Harry. He was a still pool, reflecting endlessly, and she could step in and manage him, a task she performed assiduously well, to her credit. The press, the Ministry, the funerals and the speeches: all these she had dealt with, for Harry's sake.

The upsurge of gratitude (in Harry's aura, a deep pinkish-orange); the constant steady (green, like summer grass) love he felt for her—she'd never felt it more strongly then, when her abilities had erected him an impervious shield. Hermione was proud of that time in her young life, and justly so. Why else had she extraordinary abilities but to use them wisely and well for those she loved?

Malfoy—Draco—she couldn't even begin to deal with. After he'd clawed and scrambled his way up the side of the mountain Harry had built about himself (his _fortress_, Hermione thought of it), he'd taken a flying leap into the huge reflective glass that was Harry's newly minted public face. Shattered it completely, he had, and now there were shards and slivers to pick through. _Fallout_, the Muggles called it.

Fallout scattered endlessly into Hermione's space, by extension—by association. Harry would come to her, either upset or endlessly and ridiculously overexcited (as he'd been ages ago, when the fortress was but a few crumbling walls and a moat) and demand her attention—all of it, the git, no matter what else she had on her plate. He'd pace her library-study and he'd fulminate and punctuate the air with quick jabs and pungent words (if Draco was being 'difficult') or else he'd jitter and speak in a huge whooshing rush marked with little or no punctuation (if Draco was being 'emotional'… or perhaps requiring that Harry be 'emotional' in return) or he'd brood, clunkily and with much stomping of boot heels and huffing, rumbling about and puffing angry spouts of words like a nearly dry kettle on the hob (this, generally, if Draco had 'gone fleeing back to his darling Mumsykins, Hermione—like a bloody fucking little _girl_!') Or he'd sag, sprawled all everywhere in an ominous cloud of glowering purpley-brown hue, and sulk. (Translation: Draco was 'incomprehensible', which, in Hermione's humble opinion, was just so much guff. Draco was very easily read; she simply didn't care to do so unless forced at wandpoint.)

Oh, how she wishes she _could_ care less. It's enough to keep Ron in check (when Draco's a _ruddy git_ ('difficult') or _a Mama's boy_ (retreated to the Manor) or a _ponce_, a _slag_ or worse; Harry's occupied with swilling down all their butterbeer or alternately refusing to touch even a drop of tea, and then Draco (who is_ without doubt_ a 'difficult git'; Hermione agrees completely with Harry there) generally shows his narrow, pointy face at their door and bollixes up whatever peace _she's_ managed to piece together to the highest degree imaginable.

Her clear space—her very mind—it's invaded, and generally by tumult that is not of her causing, nor her concern. Except it _is_, of course, as it's _Harry_, and with Harry, there is now _Draco_, and there is always—always—_Ron_.

Boys, Hermione feels, should be labelled as 'dangerously unstable; do _not _decant except in neutral, well safe-guarded areas'. _Not_ her study-library, that is—and _not_ her kitchen , either. Or the nursery, of course. Those are her especial domains and boys (Hermione only occasionally is able to view any single one of her known and particular specimens as being 'men'; and that's generally Ron, and only when she's shut down her mental shop for the day)—boys destroy things by their very nature.

Hermione is a feminist and proud of it. She believes in the elemental power of the Female, and would staunchly march for sufferage, had she born three or four generations earlier. She's never quite given up on SPEW and she's a ruddy sucker for a worthy cause. This she knows, and doesn't mind so much. _Someone_, she tells Ron, _should be using their head_. In fact, she adds in a dire, dour tone when it's been a rough day at the Ministry, she's obviously the only one doing so and thus she mustn't stop now. Ron (who has his own problems, most solvable by a judicious application of Quidditch on the Charmed telly and two bottles of butterbeer before dinner) agrees with her. Ron has never stopped being impressed by Hermione; she fancies sometimes she loves him for that fact alone.

Harry, too. He's actually been the one person to believe in her most strongly—the one who forgives without a word her occasional lapses; the one who has taken up for her from the very start. If she didn't adore Harry already, she'd very likely be in love with him—which would be A Very Bad Thing, and Hermione knows that, too.

Draco's the one _in love_ with Harry—perhaps, like Hermione, he even _loves_ him. Hermione, who has eyes in her head and a vast clear workspace of grey matter, can parse sufficient evidence for it to progress logically beyond theory. She sees the look on Draco's face when she answers the doorbell (Floo's shut off at eight sharp, because that's when Rosie goes down for the night) and she knows what every nuance means in terms of desperation and furious love.

Thank Christ and Merlin and the Powers That Be _he_ doesn't barge in and natter at her the way Harry does. She couldn't manage it, having another boy on her plate. But he does have his mother still (and Narcissa Malfoy is sharp as thieving knives and no wonder, having dealt with that bastard Lucius all her married life) and a safe refuge to flee, should he require it. Harry has her and Ron, and now Rosie (amazing what a toddler can do for a man sodden in love's dumps) to bolster his fortress walls and help him rebuild. And Draco, of course—he's there, on deck, with mortar and bricks and the will, if not the knowhow, which is reassuring…most times. It's when he's tearing Harry's walls down as fast as he's built them there's a distinct rub. Harry goes haywire when that happens—or when he's got his head screwed on the wrong direction and can't see what Hermione sees so clearly.

When Harry's that way, he's very needy; the amount of Wild Magic in their small foursquare cottage tests the very foundations and Hermione's all about quietly strengthening the wards and laying in the trenches. She's Rosie to think of, now.

Hermione is incredibly thankful they've been blessed with a little girl, first. Rosie, she knows, will be her delight, her prop— her _friend_, one day, when she's older. She'll understand (in the mysterious way women do, if they're even worthy of being called 'women') that boys will be boys, and girls often are required to sort them out properly.

Hermione also realizes she's been conned into that worldview by a society firmly fixated on dividing every single human emotion into little compartments and assigning them (somewhat randomly, she believes) to iconic renditions of the species. Mankind, she's concluded, loves the divinity of Order in Chaos—and perhaps ultimately for the sheer pleasure (sometimes) of running amuck through it, and that likely only as a childish demonstration of power against the unseeing eyes of idols.

Hermione allows herself no false idols. There is Truth (when her beautifully sane, well-oiled mind and her gut agree) and there is Beauty (which is also Love, but also _In the Eye_) and there is Justice (and far too little of it, naturally). Harry possesses all three of these attributes. As does her Ron—as does Draco.

She can't manage Draco Malfoy. It wouldn't be fair to Harry, but she can answer the doorbell and make tea and throw out the odd barbell of reason, and watch it crash right into the midst of Harry's colourful (frightening) swirl, Draco's incisive acid words (or his 'emotional' alternate, which is far worse to witness) and Ron's bassoprofundo clamour.

Hermione, who loves peace (and Order and related ideas), enjoys the small silence she can create. It provides an arena for Reason. A buffer, for Hope. A place for Harry to call Home, and her moment to shine.

Girls sort boys, whichever ones they've been landed with, and that's that. It's only right they should have proper tools to do so. Hermione counts herself fortunate she's a larger stock at hand than most.


End file.
